


The sun is rare, and the moon is green.

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Batman Beyond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-20
Updated: 2006-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 06:08:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1635665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Terry has become something else entirely from what he was eight years ago. Dick tries to cope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The sun is rare, and the moon is green.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Betty for the amazing, quick beta. The title of the fic comes from the song "Leave Me Alone" off the CD "Orchestra of Bubbles" which I'd highly recomend to anyone body who enjoys any form of electronic music. I am now in debt because of Yuletide, but I can proudly say it was worth it- at least, untill I get my credit card bill. /cries a little Feedback is welcomed with open arms.
> 
> Written for Basingstoke

 

 

He thinks it started when he was six.

Dick's mother hadn't let him fly until he was old enough to reach the trapeze by himself, and when he was six years, two months, and four days old, he managed to sneak an apple box past Altan the Strongman, and his first try landed him in the net. As did the second, the third, and the fourth.

The fifth try got him all the way across, but just short of the second platform.

The sixth, and he released a little early. For two and a half seconds he fell and he touched nothing. He landed his sixth so hard the sandpapered oak platforms gave him a splinter he had to ask his dad to pull out with the needle nose pliers he saw Andreas use on the lions' pads.

It took him a month before he was good enough to tell his parents.

Another before he was part of the act.

*

He knows he thought it was over at eight, but as it turns out, the circus exists in more places than just the ring, and Dick remembers thinking how easy it would be to get to know the handlebars that masqueraded as window sills, the safety nets that posed as awnings, and how strange it was that rooftops were absolutely incapable of giving young boys splinters.

At eight years, two months, and four nights old, he broke a robber's jaw and got a bullet graze in return for his troubles. The pieces of teeth ground to powder underneath his bright green pixie boots, and he remembers asking Alfred for his own thread and needle because it'd be strange for anyone else to sew up his clothes like Alfred did for Batman when he came home at night, cape full of perfectly round holes.

Dodging was different from flying, but Dick's pretty sure it felt close enough. Dick's pretty sure it felt close enough for a long time.

*

If he loved her, he loved her at sixteen.

Dick's not really sure. In the years to come, when he finds the surveillance tapes, after he has the shouting match with Babs about the definitions of things like fidelity and grace and fraternity and lust, he knows he'll pretend there wasn't even a question to begin with. He's made it clear in words and other ways that what's Bruce's isn't his, and what they have mutually isn't to be owned by either, but Dick thinks Babs made it pretty clear when she started wearing the Bat.

But sixteen had roof top tag and a moist home that felt and tasted far too much like the tea Shardha used to make after each show and he thinks above all else he may hate Babs a little. Batgirl a little more.

Dick has one hell of a big heart, but Bruce spent long and hard making sure Dick knows when to give up, and he wonders if he ever had a chance with Babs.

If Dick loved her, he loved her at sixteen.

*

He knows now with a certainty he never could've had then that he died at eighteen.

Dick wondered as a child whether or not the animals at Haly's ever got into arguments. The way Alfredo talked to his cats had Dick sitting by the tent flaps hoping to catch the conversations had between the Bengals and the panthers.

Bruce fired him like a trainer puts down an animal who's not safely *controlled* anymore. He was standing in the cave, pulling on the new yellow leggings Alfred had made him when Bruce came down and simple as anything took his communicator and asked him to leave. Not "Goodnight, Dick," but "Go." Dick seriously had considered making a petty remark about Bruce's supposed parenting skills for all Dick was his ward, but it wasn't Bruce, it was Batman, and Dick realized that any words, were they even a lullaby, would've done nothing other than expose the disgust and petty betrayal he was sure at the time he'd never be able to scrub from his skin.

Dick'd been debating evolution for a time. But then Bruce got Tim, not even two months and four nights after he'd removed Dick, and where Tim could've been his baby brother, well. Tim didn't need any help Dick could give.

Dick tried anyway, and anything that he could've become turned into making this stupid 13 year old listen to him. Tim didn't need him, Nightwing was a barren cocoon, and Babs stayed with Bruce.

*

He told himself he stopped at twenty-six.

Blüdhaven was possibly the worst decision Dick had made. Ever. It wasn't home no matter what he did, and, perhaps a little too late, he'd slowly come to realize there was something to having a partner. But he wasn't Bruce, patron saint of orphan boys. He'd tried, maybe, with Tim. But Tim- god, Tim. Dick wasn't going to be Batman. At twenty-six years, two months, and four nights and days, Dick could say with some certainty that he wasn't going to be Batman, but maybe, just maybe, Tim could.

Dick? Dick had too much fucking heart.

*

He remembers twenty-eight like yesterday.

The Joker took Tim when Dick was twenty-eight, two months, and four days old. It was like putting out a candle, and Dick remembers watching Babs cry for the first time.

Like sitting outside of flaps, this old Robin took roost in Gotham's clock tower. Dick thought it was oddly poetic. It took him exactly a year before he found where Joker and Harley were keeping JJ.

Shardha kept a pack of timber wolves. Dick had played with them like brothers. When the one with green eyes started making these moaning coughing noises, Shardha took him out back and broke his neck. It's the kind of memory that Dick has where the lights flicker at the edges and everything seems scratchy and old. He remembers it as the first time he cried, just like he remembers the magenta of the Romanian sky, and that same sense tells him that's the first time he cried.

Dick's learned better than to cry, but he'd be lying if he said he hadn't tried to put the shell Tim left behind out of it's misery once. He'd gotten close enough to see the clumps of violet pigment Harley'd used to draw the smile on this time, "close enough to snap his neck" the part of his head that'd started to speak like Batman in the past five years chuckled. When Tim'd opened his eye, the one that wasn't swollen shut, and said as plain as day, "Bruce thinks about you sometimes."

He left the room, Tim's good iris following him back into the blue-black shadows. Dick never thought of him as JJ again.

*

He saw Bruce nearly kill a man at thirty-six.

Tim didn't look at day over twenty when he shot the Joker. Dick still thinks it should've been Bruce's job. Dick still knows he couldn't have done it had he been in Bruce's place, and for the first time in about a decade, two months, and four days, he wonders if that really makes him the better person.

*

He knows Gotham changed at thirty-eight.

Dick's positive it wasn't just Babs hanging up the cape and becoming commissioner of the GCPD, just like he's sure it wasn't the new architectural craze that'd come along with that new building material they'd developed from the fusion of ultra hot steel and volcanic glass. Just like he'd be sure it wasn't the anti-grav cars that came along in five years time, or the razing of the major housing developments two years, two months, and four days after that.

All things considered, Dick thinks now that the Joker, like the Batman, was just an integral part of the city, and nobody had any idea what the hell they were doing when they'd somehow managed to destroy both.

Bruce started wearing a different suit, and these days isn't around much at all. Something about the red bat breaks what's left of Dick's heart.

*

He feels anger again at fourty-six.

It's been a solid decade since anyone's seen Batman period, and Dick doesn't have it in him to be disgusted anymore. The city's a waste dump, worse than it was when this whole affair began nearly four decades ago, and Babs, like him, never quite had what it took to do the job all by herself. It's not recognizable, Dick laments. The dawns are different colors, the kids different delinquents, and he thinks Tim, with all his adaptability, still would've had a horrendous time fitting in between the cracks in this oil slick of a metropolis. Dick knows it's irrational to blame Bruce.

Dick absolutely doesn't care that it's irrational to blame Bruce, which is what has him at the doorstep of the Wayne Manor for the first time in thirty years. It'd be funny how defensive this stupid city managed to make him feel, but he's always kept the company of like-minded men.

Bruce has a dog now, and Dick hates that his stomach flips at the sight. The bastard's just as ugly and unforgiving as his master ever was, and Dick has a good mind to kick it in the snout just on the freaking principle.

Instead, he pushes the buzzer, waits for the soft click of the intercom to come on, and says "Find someone."

People in the past had often confused Bruce's inability to take advice with an inability to listen. He hopes that hasn't necessarily changed.

*

He feels something akin to amusement at fourty-eight.

Mostly because Dick wonders where in the hell Bruce found a piece of work like Terry McGuiness.

Not that he's actually surprised. Much. Terry's like Tim on a bad day, with the charisma of Dick on a great day, and really, why isn't he more surprised? The kid can't sleuth worth anything, but he doesn't really need to, Dick supposes, if the frequency with which the boy checks his intercom is any indication.

Bruce and his new toy. Terry and the mission. Dick's not positive it isn't a new mission, but either way, he figure's it's close enough. This Batman's half Bat, half untrained, and a little Robin. The kid has a Bat voice, though. An honest to God Bat voice, and Dick thinks for the first time in about two months and four days, maybe this kid can pull it off.

In all likelihood, after the kid's mother joins his father in tragic death, before or after he has to watch his kid brother get tortured to death or turned evil against him, somewhere in there, the kid's just not going to last. They don't build costumed heroes like they used to, Dick thinks, and this kid is no exception.

*

He's found at fifty-six.

By Terry. And it's. He's. Dick doesn't know anymore, and mostly it's frustrating, but a little of it feels like coming home.

"Batman" he doesn't breathe. Because Terry has become something else entirely from what he was eight years ago. A little of it feels like hope. Most of it, though, feels like the one time Altan let him be the model on his spinning wheel for throwing knives, which, apart from flying, is probably the best thing he's felt all his life.

"Bruce told me Ace doesn't like you much."

"Ace?" Dick doesn't need to ask, and really, when did he get this old?

"The dog."

"I'm pretty sure it doesn't even likes Bruce most days."

Eight years ago that would've gotten him a laugh, Dick thinks, trying hard not to be slightly in awe. All it gets him is the crooked twitch at the corner of Terry's mouth which is so Bruce he has to gasp lightly, almost has to touch. Dick's trying hard and failing not to be slightly in something.

It almost makes Dick forget to ask the boy why he's here. And just as abruptly, he realizes he doesn't need to.

"He's dying."

Dick really doesn't mean to laugh, but-

"And that's amusing to you."

The only way Terry could possibly entertain the idea is because Dick's covering his eyes so tightly he can almost make himself believe he'll go blind if he tries hard enough, so tightly he can almost make himself believe he'd want to. He lets his hands drop and has the satisfaction of seeing the boy... settle.

"If you only knew how many times in my life I've heard that, you'd laugh a little too."

Another mouth twitch, and Dick needs to stop looking at Batman. So he looks at the floor and asks the only thing he really has left. "How much time?"

"Two months and a few days."

"Just enough-" Dick doesn't finish. Just enough to learn to like the man again. Just enough to ask for forgiveness. Just enough to know you, Terry. Just enough-

"Just enough." And Dick knows it's an echo, but it works all the same. They've both lived in caves all their lives, what's a little echo?

*

He watches a legend survive at fifty-eight.

Seeing Bruce again is like nothing he ever wanted.

Bruce, for his part, looks just as aged as he absolutely should. Dick can pretend that's a shock, but Dick does read the newspapers, so it's not, not really. Not even when he touches Bruce's face, and the texture feels more like the old suit did than human skin.

"Ironically, I was always afraid I'd be the one to bury you." Bruce opens his eyes and tries to do something akin to a smile, but it just winds up causing him to cough a lot.

"I can't believe you still haven't learned how to apologize." Dick knows it shouldn't pull a smile from him, but wanting anything Bruce doesn't has always been an exercise in futility, especially with this kind of proximity. "How's the kid dealing with that?"

"He knows what to listen for when I say things. Reminds me of a kid a used to know."

Seeing Bruce again is like nothing he ever wanted, and it's not fair that it hurts quite this much.

In the end, of course, Bruce does, in fact, die. Dick, in fact, does not.

Nor does Terry.

Nor does Batman.

 


End file.
